


through hell and high water

by triangularium



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Fluff, Introspection, M/M, Pining, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 16:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9131521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triangularium/pseuds/triangularium
Summary: He doesn’t know what thesomethingis, but he knows how he feels when he sees Yuuri smile, and the little fluttering in his chest cavity that beats a staccatostay close to me.He knows he has decided to call it love.





	

Sometimes, Viktor is afraid that he’s the only one doing all of the tugging in their relationship. 

After all, _he_ followed his playboy, who eventually turned out to be mostly a result of his imagination running rampant with the subtext of a drunk Yuuri’s words at Sochi. 

_Be my coach, Viktor!_

_He_ sank into the warm spring water of Yutopia naked, hoping that maybe the sight of his “killer” (at least, according to Christophe) glistening abs would provide the impetus for the banquet to continue from the point at which it had left off, to allow their teetering one-night relationship to perpetuate itself.

_He_ initiated all physical contact between himself and Yuuri, including unnecessarily tilting his chin up for close eye contact, stroking Yuuri’s limbs as he smoothed the edges of his quad technique, and even the backwards hug at the Chugoku, Shikoku, and Kyushu Championship.

Yuuri, on the other hand, has always sought to create as much distance between the two of them as possible. At first, Viktor marked his uncomfortable, jumpy behavior off as a consequence of lingering youthful idolization, but he thought it would taper off as time passed and Yuuri realized that apart from the rink, Viktor was ordinary. He emphasized this by occasionally dramatizing his reaction to the parted thinning hair that Yuuri was fond of affectionately poking.

He could bleed. He could dream. He could love.

Perhaps Yuuri hasn’t yet managed to reconcile Viktor on ice, an ethereal creature larger than life, with Viktor the man, who adores Makkachin way too much for his own good and is -- honestly -- a dork.

In regards to Yuuri, Viktor thinks he’s always been blind. Viktor’s name holds a lot of clout, but Yakov wasn’t lying when he warned him of the hazards of abandoning skating for a season to coach a wild card, of heading to a completely different country with no idea regarding how to speak the language or a plan on where to stay.

(Viktor fancied himself in love, on a perilous journey to recover his prince, secluded far away in a dark tower so tall it pierced the clouds.)

Because when Yuuri, shiny, irresistible brown eyes and all, begged him to be his coach before scandalized and amused skaters, coaches, and sponsors, Viktor didn’t hear the “coach” part so much as he heard the word “my.”

He’s never told Yuuri what the statement meant to him, for fear of causing his anxiety, amplified by commitment and mistaken expectations, to crop up and change the dynamics of what they have now -- this détente. It isn’t ideal, but it’s enough.

(This is what he whispers to himself at night, clutching Makkachin close and burying his nose in soft fur that he wishes was equally soft dark hair.)

He’s never belonged to someone before.

The ice had taken everything, swallowed his screams of pain as he fought to land his first quadruple flip, his free time as he struggled to hone his step sequences to artificial perfection, his soul -- because he slit his heart with razor blades, pouring lifeblood onto the ice in exchange for metal medallions that chained him closer to it. His practice sessions had a habit of leaving an oppressively hollow void behind.

He’d faked, because it was the only thing he’d known how to do.

He could fake being the father, the older brother, the friend, the lover figure because he once had the potential to be all of those things before he tied his destiny to the podium.

Yuuri doesn’t want any of that. ( _Yuuri is interesting._ )

And that is precisely what makes him dangerous (for Viktor’s mental state and for his career, and he wonders at Yakov’s admirable intuition because his coach managed to spot the oncoming train wreck from miles away).

When Yuuri confessed his love for him on live television, Viktor didn’t realize it. Everything was in rapid-fire Japanese, and while he’d picked up a few basic words and phrases ( _Yamete kudasai!_ was something Yuuri tended to shout a lot when Viktor knocked on his door on particularly lonely nights, asking to sleep with him), it wasn’t nearly enough to even get the gist of the situation.

So Viktor did what he normally did when he was interested in a foreign interview. He turned on the official subtitles of the clip when it was uploaded to Youtube, detouring by absently trawling several popular figure skating forums until something caught his eye.

It was an online newspaper article and it featured a large two-section image of a still from Viktor’s _Stammi Vicino_ routine juxtaposed with Yuuri mid-spin during _On Love: Eros_ from Hot Springs on Ice.

“Viktuuri Real?! Japan’s Ace Professes Love to the World!” it proclaimed.

Viktor blinked and double-checked the publisher. It was a major news network, not a trashy tabloid.

Hours later, he’d put the ten or so seconds of the most important segment of the interview on loop, feeling blood rush to his cheeks with the syrupy Japanese intonations that meant the world to him.

Viktor is the first person I’ve wanted to hold on to.

Viktor is the first person I’ve wanted to hold on to.

He smiled, goofy and fullblown and dopey ( _oh, he had it bad_ ).

“Makka, I think I’m finally making some progress!”

_Oh, Yuuri, you’re the first person I’ve wanted to hold on to, too._

The walls crumbled soon after that, with Viktor’s palm pressed against Yuuri’s now flat stomach, twining through white hotel room sheets, the two of them silent, unbreathing, and frightened of destroying the fragile, developing _something_ spinning its way into existence between them. With Yuuri’s aggressive tie tug at the Rostelecom Cup, and his reckless declaration of “showing his love to the whole of Russia.” With Viktor running across the airport waiting room parallel to the glass, matching steps with Yuuri, with a foolhardy promise to stand by him long into the grey fog of an uncertain future.

The difference between then and now is that the future isn’t just near; it’s here.

Viktor wears the golden ring, Yuuri’s mark, on his finger as a realization of that promise, and as a reminder that the quiet, insidious threat of “let’s end this” was ultimately just a false alarm.

Yuuri wears the golden ring, Viktor’s mark, on his finger in honor of the quiet beauty that bloomed from a failure years ago in a colder Russia, and as a reminder that even if he flubs a jump or overrotates a turn, he is loved unconditionally.

They’re at a small restaurant down the street from the apartment that used to be Viktor’s (and then was Viktor and Makkachin’s, and finally Viktor-Makkachin-Yuuri-Yuri’s as his family has grown larger in time).

Viktor has always been partial to it because it’s small and almost undetectable from a streetside view, leading to slow, languid business hours, with -- at times -- only Yuuri and him at a table. (It’s private. After years spent under the harsh scrutiny of a spotlight brightened by his rockstar charisma, he hoards his privacy possessively.)

The taste of the hanging silence has changed. Before, it was bitter and stringy, drooping with the weight of words unsaid, of actions misinterpreted, and the sour taint of insecurity. They were out of sync, Viktor rushing through the pages of a book as Yuuri attempted to write on it, to leave defining marks on a whirlwind, fairytale romance that seemed doomed to fail.

Now, Viktor finds himself picking up Yuuri’s orange soda at the supermarket when it runs out, curling his hands around Yuuri’s and watching their rings glint together in evening half-light, and waking up to black strands of feathery lightness splayed against his bare chest. They are inexplicably connected.

(This is not the life he wanted for himself when he was sixteen. When he’d won his first Grand Prix, and _it can’t get better than this, I’m on top of the world_.)

(He pities the man he was -- _I wish I could tell you what I’d become_.)

“I’m going to go to the bathroom, Vitya,” Yuuri says through a mouthful of borscht.

Viktor still has no idea why he likes the dish; to him, it looks like chunky blood and reminds him of Yuri smashing the vegetables into gooey semisolid puddles when Yakov chides him for mechanical choreography or for secretly practicing quad toe loops.

He only looks up when a thin, blond man slides into the seat Yuuri has just vacated.

“Hello there, beautiful,” he slurs thickly in Russian. “Want to ditch the piggy and come have a pint?”

Viktor is still in his early thirties, but he looks much younger than that when he smiles.

(Here is a fact: According to Yuuri Katsuki-Nikiforov, he looks much prettier when he smiles, too.)

(Here is another fact: He is not smiling right now.)

Along with the pirozhki disintegrating in the acidic environment of his stomach, there is a turbulent sensation and for a moment, Viktor thinks he might get sick. It takes him a few moments to understand that the feeling is disgust.

“I’m taken,” he bites out (and he has to make this man leave before Yuuri comes back, because -- this brings back bad memories of himself calling Yuuri a pig, of encouraging a subtle kind of bullying in the name of jumpstarting improvement -- today is Yuuri’s birthday and he loves him, loves him, loves him so much and would give him the world if he would only ask for it --). “That’s my husband’s seat. Please leave me alone.”

“Oh, but I’m sure I can show you a good time --,” he stops abruptly.

There’s a shadow over Viktor’s shoulder. If Viktor is the sun, Yuuri is a streaking cirrus cloud, not dim or overcast, but just there.

(His fingers are just there as well. They seep through the cracks between Viktor’s own and settle in the dents and divisions, linked halves of the same puzzle.)

“Excuse me,” Yuuri says mildly (even when he means _get out of my chair, why are you harassing my lover?_ , and Viktor will eat his skates before he admits that it makes him fall in love with Yuuri all over again).

The man leaves. It’s actually very anticlimactic, and Viktor had already been visualizing duels fought by his faithful _prins_ in his honor. He tells Yuuri this.

(There are many things that have changed since their retirements. Neither of them are capable of landing quads, as Viktor had discovered painfully one morning at the local public rink and Yuuri afterward, as he had faded out of the sport by his late twenties. They visit Makkachin together every morning, and Viktor brings flower crowns. Viktor awakens every morning with his arm sore but warm, wrapped around the dead weight of Yuuri huddled under a stack of fuzzy blankets. One thing that has not changed is Yuuri’s loud, unrestrained laughter. Yuuri sniffles a little as he laughs, and Viktor spent months thinking it was a perpetual cold inspired by Russia’s comparatively hostile weather before asking Yuuri and discovering another embarrassing personal quirk to adore him for.)

Sometimes, Viktor is afraid of the tightness of the _something_ between them, drawn taut like a rope.

(But he trusts. When he pulls, Yuuri will pull right back with him, and they will end up a little farther from a lopsided beginning. And when Yuuri pulls, it is he who helps maintain the flexible, no longer tentative equilibrium.)

He doesn’t quite know what the _something_ is. It isn’t clear cut, like pure Eros, or true Agape, or even an effable combination of both.

He doesn’t know what the _something_ is, but he knows how he feels when he sees Yuuri smile, and the little fluttering in his chest cavity that beats a staccato _stay close to me_.

He knows he has decided to call it love.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully the time/tenses/order isn't too off or incomprehensible on this. What do you think? (also, did I overuse my italics?)


End file.
